UC students have been lobbying state lawmakers to increase funding for the system.

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Caitriona Smyth, center, yells as she and other students march under Sather Gate during a protest against tuition increases at the University of California Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., Monday, Nov. 24, 2014. Students protesting tuition hikes in the University of California system staged walkouts at multiple campuses after the UC Board of Regents voted 14-7 to approve increases of as much as 5 percent in each of the next five years unless the state devotes more money to the system on Thursday, Nov. 20. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Students who attend a University of California campus and live in the Golden State may be spared higher tuition bills next year.

UC announced Thursday it would put off a planned vote on raising in-state tuition at a May meeting of the board of regents that oversees the system.

Regents, students and faculty have been making trips to Sacramento to push state lawmakers for more funding and are increasingly optimistic they will prevail.

The “tone and tenor of conversations have been changing,” said student regent Paul Monge. “I think there is momentum building.”

Recently, Assemblyman Jose Medina, speaking at a conference with several other lawmakers, said he wanted to “fully fund” UC to make sure all students, particularly the Latino young people who make up a growing portion of the state’s students, have access to higher education.

In the wake of student protests, the California State University system announced last Friday it will not increase tuition for the 2018-19 school year.

But UC faces a tough battle. After a blistering audit suggested the system had mismanaged its budget, Gov. Brown said UC should trim its spending rather than get more money beyond the three percent budget increase included in his January budget. UC President Janet Napolitano and others have countered that more students than ever are enrolling, placing heavier burdens on the system’s finances.

“Given the momentum of UC advocacy efforts, and a reported state budget surplus that is billions of dollars over projections, UC is hopeful that increased state funding will eliminate the need for a tuition increase,” UC said in a statement Tuesday.

Max Lubin, a master’s student at UC Berkeley and a founder of the student advocacy group Rise California, said his group and others have convinced more than 5,000 students to sign petitions opposing the tuition hike. They also have made more than 1,000 calls to lawmakers and traveled to Sacramento nearly every recent weekend for meetings and hearings.

Budget negotiations could continue through May and into June. If UC isn’t successful, the regents could still vote to increase tuition for the next school year. In March, UC voted to increase tuition for out-of-state students by 3.5 percent.

Monge, Lubin and others hope it won’t come to that.

“Lawmakers are starting to take note,” Lubin said. “Enough is enough. That message has become really clear.”

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